The Appeal to Novelty

Games Halo 5: Guardians
#1

Yes, I’m making another thread about a fallacious argument which I’ve been seeing on the forums.

I’m talking about the idea that because something is new, therefore it is better; no reasoning behind why it is better, it just is because it is new. End of story.
I should briefly mention that by contrast, implying that something is better simply because it is older is also fallacious.

How does this apply to Halo?

Well, I see a lot of debates on the forums about whether Halo 5 should stick with the core gameplay of Halo 4, or revert back to the core gameplay of the original Halo (and by extension, the original Halo trilogy).
A common argument which is put forward in favour of the new gameplay features staying in future installments, is that there is no need for Halo to “devolve” into the older style of gameplay. Or in other words, that Halo shouldn’t be going back on itself in any way.
Those of us who have been around long enough have seen this argument more than once.

If a Halo 4 defender says that there is no need for Halo to devolve and builds upon that by giving reasons why, then that would be absolutely fine because they aren’t relying on chronology as an argument. They are simply using the word devolve to describe the action of reverting back, while giving reasons as to why they think it should not.
However, if a Halo 4 defender simply says that there is no need for Halo to devolve, and that is the beginning and end of their argument, then they are appealing to novelty and they are doing themselves and their fellow Halo 4 defenders a disservice.

Keep your eye out for this type of argument; I’m hoping that by raising awareness of it, people might notice it more when it happens, and not neglect to point out the fallacy.

The truth is, if an older feature works better, it works better; the fact that it is older does not negate that.
If you want to convincingly make a case for the newer features being better, then making a song and dance about Halo 4’s chronological superiority isn’t the way to go about it.

#2

The thing is, a lot of people here seem to want no change at all. Half the community is against the simple sprinting ability. Halo 3 was my favorite Halo, and I would love 343 to build off it, but I don’t want an exact copy. A lot of people have proposed great ideas that wouldn’t harm the core gameplay, yet still, the so called “purists” don’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t say I’m a Halo 4 fan, but some of the things it introduced could work great in Halo if tweaked instead of removed completely.

#3

> The thing is, a lot of people here seem to want no change at all.

That is simply not true.

You will struggle to find people who literally want a game with nothing but graphical improvements on Halo 3.
That claim is 100% fabricated and is made to defend the position that appealing to novelty has merit.

What people want is for consistent core gameplay, with changes that adhere to that gameplay. It’s a world apart from wanting absolutely nothing to change.

> Half the community is against the simple sprinting ability.

It’s convenient that you throw the word “simple” in there so as to suggest that it is not even a significant change to Halo.

Enough has been done to show how sprint is a single gameplay feature which impacts the game in multiple, negative ways.

> Halo 3 was my favorite Halo, and I would love 343 to build off it, but I don’t want an exact copy.

And who does, exactly? You are putting words in people’s mouth’s by implying this.

Again, people do not want Halo 3 in a Halo 4 or 5 case, and you will do well to stop suggesting that they do.
Instead, counter their arguments for why each feature is not working for Halo, otherwise you are doing nothing by suggesting that they want nothing more than Halo 3.

> A lot of people have proposed great ideas that wouldn’t harm the core gameplay, yet still, the so called “purists” don’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t say I’m a Halo 4 fan, but some of the things it introduced could work great in Halo if tweaked instead of removed completely.

I can’t comment on those “great ideas” because I simply do not know which of them you are referring to.
I’ve heard fantastic ideas, and I’ve heard horrendous ideas.

#4

> > The thing is, a lot of people here seem to want no change at all.
>
> That is simply not true.
>
> You will struggle to find people who literally want a game with nothing but graphical improvements on Halo 3.
> That claim is 100% fabricated and is made to defend the position that appealing to novelty has merit.
>
> What people want is for consistent core gameplay, with changes that adhere to that gameplay. It’s a world apart from wanting absolutely nothing to change.
>
>
>
> > Half the community is against the simple sprinting ability.
>
> It’s convenient that you throw the word “simple” in there so as to suggest that it is not even a significant change to Halo.
>
> Enough has been done to show how sprint is a single gameplay feature which impacts the game in multiple, negative ways.
>
>
>
> > Halo 3 was my favorite Halo, and I would love 343 to build off it, but I don’t want an exact copy.
>
> And who does, exactly? You are putting words in people’s mouth’s by implying this.
>
> Again, people do not want Halo 3 in a Halo 4 or 5 case, and you will do well to stop suggesting that they do.
> Instead, counter their arguments for why each feature is not working for Halo, otherwise you are doing nothing by suggesting that they want nothing more than Halo 3.
>
>
>
> > A lot of people have proposed great ideas that wouldn’t harm the core gameplay, yet still, the so called “purists” don’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t say I’m a Halo 4 fan, but some of the things it introduced could work great in Halo if tweaked instead of removed completely.
>
> I can’t comment on those “great ideas” because I simply do not know which of them you are referring to.
> I’ve heard fantastic ideas, and I’ve heard horrendous ideas.

You’re one my favorite forum members, so I don’t want an argument, but I just think it was wrong that you call out the people who attack others for wanting small changes, and not also the people who attack others for wanting some bigger changes that don’t change the core gameplay that much.

#5

> You’re one my favorite forum members, so I don’t want an argument, but I just think it was wrong that you call out the people who attack others for wanting small changes, and not also the people who attack others for wanting some bigger changes that don’t change the core gameplay that much.

Honestly, you’re one of my favorite forum members too and I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to start an argument! Please don’t mistake my disagreements for hostility.
I’m simply challenging what I believe to be some unfair assumptions about the people who dislike the vast majority of features that differentiate Halo 3 from Halo 4.

What I’m calling out with this thread, is simply the argument that because something is newer, it is better.
With a brief mention that the opposite is also untrue. Brief because I don’t really ever see it used as an argument in the Halo world (though I certainly see it in the music and film world).

#6

> The thing is, a lot of people here seem to want no change at all. Half the community is against the simple sprinting ability.

Not wanting sprint doesn’t equate to not wanting change. Default sprint is as big of a change as the implementation of armor abilities in Halo Reach.

Simple does not equate to minor. Just because the idea is straight forward doesn’t mean it isn’t hugely impactful.

#7

> > The thing is, a lot of people here seem to want no change at all. Half the community is against the simple sprinting ability.
>
> Not wanting sprint doesn’t equate to not wanting change. Default sprint is as big of a change as the implementation of armor abilities in Halo Reach.
>
> Simple does not equate to minor. Just because the idea is straight forward doesn’t mean it isn’t hugely impactful.

Conveniently, here is another one of my favourite forum members.

But yeah I agree, I wish people would see that a strong disliking of Halo 4, does not equate to a strong resistance to any kind of change.
One of my worst fears for the future of Halo is that there will be a lack of change.

#8

> > You’re one my favorite forum members, so I don’t want an argument, but I just think it was wrong that you call out the people who attack others for wanting small changes, and not also the people who attack others for wanting some bigger changes that don’t change the core gameplay that much.
>
> Honestly, you’re one of my favorite forum members too and I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to start an argument! Please don’t mistake my disagreements for hostility.
> I’m simply challenging what I believe to be some unfair assumptions about the people who dislike the vast majority of features that differentiate Halo 3 from Halo 4.
>
> What I’m calling out with this thread, is simply the argument that because something is newer, it is better.
> With a brief mention that the opposite is also untrue. Brief because I don’t really ever see it used as an argument in the Halo world (though I certainly see it in the music and film world).

I have seen some radical change requests. But trust me, I’ve also seen a lot of people who just say “no, No, NO!” to everything. I’m up for any change that doesn’t break gameplay, and I’m up for keeping things the same that work fine.

#9

> > The thing is, a lot of people here seem to want no change at all. Half the community is against the simple sprinting ability.
>
> Not wanting sprint doesn’t equate to not wanting change. Default sprint is as big of a change as the implementation of armor abilities in Halo Reach.
>
> Simple does not equate to minor. Just because the idea is straight forward doesn’t mean it isn’t hugely impactful.

I don’t want another sprint debate with you, so lets jet agree to disagree again :slight_smile:

#10

> > > The thing is, a lot of people here seem to want no change at all. Half the community is against the simple sprinting ability.
> >
> > Not wanting sprint doesn’t equate to not wanting change. Default sprint is as big of a change as the implementation of armor abilities in Halo Reach.
> >
> > Simple does not equate to minor. Just because the idea is straight forward doesn’t mean it isn’t hugely impactful.
>
> I don’t want another sprint debate with you, so lets jet agree to disagree again :slight_smile:

I didn’t realize you and I had gone back and forth on this one.

Can you not at least acknowledge that being against sprint doesn’t constitute being against change in general? You don’t have to agree with me, but at least acknowledge that the stance is rooted in something other than a deep and abiding desire for stagnation.

#11

> I have seen some radical change requests. But trust me, I’ve also seen a lot of people who just say “no, No, NO!” to everything. I’m up for any change that doesn’t break gameplay, and I’m up for keeping things the same that work fine.

My experience has been tremendously different; it would seem to me that very few people (if any) will say no to absolutely any idea.

I think the vast majority of ideas that are put forward are things that would “break” the core experience from the original trilogy. This is only natural of course, as it is not going to be an easy task to find features that do would work with a certain set of core gameplay principles.

I’m sure you will disagree, and I’m more than happy for you to do so, but I think that your observation of people saying “no no no”, is as a result of the fact that most ideas do not pass inspection.

Even if I were to agree that those people are numerous, it wouldn’t matter because I wanted to focus solely on one logical fallacy in this thread.
I think that a problem like the one you talk about, where people are too closed minded to new ideas, is a thread in itself.

#12

> > > > The thing is, a lot of people here seem to want no change at all. Half the community is against the simple sprinting ability.
> > >
> > > Not wanting sprint doesn’t equate to not wanting change. Default sprint is as big of a change as the implementation of armor abilities in Halo Reach.
> > >
> > > Simple does not equate to minor. Just because the idea is straight forward doesn’t mean it isn’t hugely impactful.
> >
> > I don’t want another sprint debate with you, so lets jet agree to disagree again :slight_smile:
>
> I didn’t realize you and I had gone back and forth on this one.
>
> Can you not at least acknowledge that being against sprint doesn’t constitute being against change in general? You don’t have to agree with me, but at least acknowledge that the stance is rooted in something other than a deep and abiding desire for stagnation.

I’ve heard some good reasons why sprint is bad, and I’ve heard some great ways to fix it. I didn’t mean to make it sound as if being against sprint equals being against change. I was using an example of how a seemingly basic ability can divide the community.

#13

> I was using an example of how a seemingly basic ability can divide the community.

Fair enough. Always someone against everything, and everybody agrees on nothing.

Hit scan vs projectile is divisive
Bleed vs no bleed is divisive (Halo 4 melee is too powerful imo, but I’ve been converted to pro bleed)

I think we can all agree that the Gears cover system is a no go though. =D

#14

> > I have seen some radical change requests. But trust me, I’ve also seen a lot of people who just say “no, No, NO!” to everything. I’m up for any change that doesn’t break gameplay, and I’m up for keeping things the same that work fine.
>
> My experience has been tremendously different; it would seem to me that very few people (if any) will say no to absolutely any idea.
>
> I think the vast majority of ideas that are put forward are things that would “break” the core experience from the original trilogy. This is only natural of course, as it is not going to be an easy task to find features that do would work with a certain set of core gameplay principles.
>
> I’m sure you will disagree, and I’m more than happy for you to do so, but I think that your observation of people saying “no no no”, is as a result of the fact that most ideas do not pass inspection.
>
> Even if I were to agree that those people are numerous, it wouldn’t matter because I wanted to focus solely on one logical fallacy in this thread.
> I think that a problem like the one you talk about, where people are too closed minded to new ideas, is a thread in itself.

I’ll give you an example of one thing I’ve seen. There was a post maybe a few weeks ago about customizing the HUD. The original poster thought it would be cool if you could move the different elements to your liking, such as moving the shield bar to the bottom or motion tracker to the top right. Not game breaking at all, and it adds customization. Yet still, a lot of people were like "NO! THE HUD IS PERFECT! WHY CHANGE IT? WHAT’S THE POINT? BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! It’s just really annoying when I see that a lot of people refuse to except the smallest bit of change (a cosmetic one at that). I’ve seen a lot of this, so forgive me if I seem to hate the purists.

#15

> > > I have seen some radical change requests. But trust me, I’ve also seen a lot of people who just say “no, No, NO!” to everything. I’m up for any change that doesn’t break gameplay, and I’m up for keeping things the same that work fine.
> >
> > My experience has been tremendously different; it would seem to me that very few people (if any) will say no to absolutely any idea.
> >
> > I think the vast majority of ideas that are put forward are things that would “break” the core experience from the original trilogy. This is only natural of course, as it is not going to be an easy task to find features that do would work with a certain set of core gameplay principles.
> >
> > I’m sure you will disagree, and I’m more than happy for you to do so, but I think that your observation of people saying “no no no”, is as a result of the fact that most ideas do not pass inspection.
> >
> > Even if I were to agree that those people are numerous, it wouldn’t matter because I wanted to focus solely on one logical fallacy in this thread.
> > I think that a problem like the one you talk about, where people are too closed minded to new ideas, is a thread in itself.
>
> I’ll give you an example of one thing I’ve seen. There was a post maybe a few weeks ago about customizing the HUD. The original poster thought it would be cool if you could move the different elements to your liking, such as moving the shield bar to the bottom or motion tracker to the top right. Not game breaking at all, and it adds customization. Yet still, a lot of people were like "NO! THE HUD IS PERFECT! WHY CHANGE IT? WHAT’S THE POINT? BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! It’s just really annoying when I see that a lot of people refuse to except the smallest bit of change (a cosmetic one at that). I’ve seen a lot of this.

I’ve seen this kind of behavior too. It isn’t necessarily as frequent as some might think, but there are a sizeable portion of people who will simply refuse to accept anything new on the grounds of “it’s not broken, don’t even touch it.” That kind of mentality probably was born out of Reach and Halo 4; it’s not too crazy to believe that some people will become phobic to change when the last two times the games tried changing something it came off to them as an unmitigated disaster. They, incorrectly, assume that all change will in some way negatively impact the game one way or another, and are content to sit still, unmoving, playing Halo 3 for the rest of the franchise.

I’ve seen these kinds of people–large swathes of people over on Bungie.net were flaming a guy for daring to suggest that Halo 5 add in some customizable weapon skins, nothing more, nothing less. But to say that any given statement is completely 100% “fabricated” is almost certainly to be wrong to some degree; absolutism is, ironically, almost always, as the OP says, fallacious, especially given the shear size of this community. We have a lot of personalities to choose from, and unfortunately, a lot of those personalities are ones I’d prefer not to think about. On the other hand, fortunately, a majority of those kinds of people don’t occupy this site, and are instead content to sit at other sites and type up completely pointless hate threads on a daily basis, many of them directed entirely at the Waypoint community itself, feeding their own opinions with truly impressive amounts of confirmation bias.

So these people do exist, they’re just not here.

#16

Jazzii Man, yes, not all new things equal good, Armor Lock was kind of a good example to this. But at the same time, new things can be good, IE MM Filters, Reach’s Menu, Forge, Forge 2.0, Spartan Ops, Fire Fight, and so on. New things are both good and bad, and can be viewed as both. And often people Only view the bad in something, when the idea, or some of the features within said idea might be good ideas.

All of these new fangled Hybrid cars I see running around, I’d never buy one, yes they’re new, no I’m not scared of new, I just don’t want a vehicle that can’t climb a hill, and is made out of cheap materials to make cost cheaper and a lighter vehicle. I’m still rocking Windows 7, mostly because I dislike the look, and some of the features/core features of Windows 8. I like new things, but at the same time, I’m not going to jump onto every new item bandwagon every time something new is out.
Nor am I about to jump onto the hate bandwagon.

Yes, I can understand, and agree with the idea round people not wanting new features that messes with the core gameplay. But at the same time I wouldn’t mind seeing features that do add to the core gameplay, but as long as on the back/client end of the game, we have options out of the wazzu for custom games, which the developer can then in turn look at and say “Hey, this percentage of players like this feature over this feature, this percentage of players enjoy this much sprint verse this much sprint, everyone loves these weapons, but people rarely touch these weapons.” And use the data collected for that, and use it to in turn adjust the game as a whole, or future games. Halo 3 to Halo Reach to Halo 4, felt like a shotgun effect when it comes to direction of where the game was headed as a whole. In some parts of the games, it was headed in a direction everyone agree with and loved, others well, they missed altogether.

Custom games was something that I felt was good in Reach, but then did a nose dive into the earth in Halo 4. I’m hoping the reasoning behind this was mostly because they was focused on Matchmaking, spartan ops, and campaign, and ran out of room like what I’m guessing happened with armor.

If that’s the case I’m hoping that they’ve learned from Halo 4, which is good, no game should be scrapped, and forgotten about, we learn from the mistakes of the past, and better ourselves. I’m also hoping the fact that Halo 5 is on the Xbox One, and that Xbox One is more powerful than Xbox 360, that Halo 5 will not lack in some aspects that Halo 4 did, just so it looks better.

Also, I just want to point out that I feel like I’m the most hated person on these forums as of late… Don’t know why if it’s because my stance on things, because of my opinion, because of my name, because of my past, or just because I can come off as harsh sometimes.

#17

> You will struggle to find people who literally want a game with nothing but graphical improvements on Halo 3.

There was a time when I would’ve defended this. But the reality of it is that for every time I have ever said “what people actually want --” in the next hour or so I have seen someone suggesting “they should just go back to Halo 3”. This goes way back, probably into the days just after the Halo 4 announcement.

Whether it’s because people are too lazy to explain themselves more carefully or because they genuinely want to play Halo 3 again, it’s impossible to defend them. Towards every paragraph I wrote to make people understand what we really want, there were always ten one sentence long posts “I want it to be like Halo 3”. So, eventually I just gave up because I’m not qualified to tell people what other people actually think.

I can easily imagine why there is this perception that most people who dislike Halo 4 want Halo 3 back. To be honest, it’s at the point that I don’t really even know how many people there actually are who just want Halo 3 back as it was. All I know is that anyone who tells about what they want in less than a proper-sized paragraph isn’t helping the cause. And there are a lot of such people.

#18

Wow, that argument was so politically correct…

OT:

OP, while I agree that a hell of a lot of features from Halo 4 should be abandoned going into Halo 5, I completely disagree with your whole post. Never have I seen anyone trying to defend Halo 4 because it’s new- not once. Every time someone defends Halo 4, they write detailed posts and explain their opinion but they get attacked nonetheless. On the other hand, as our dear Tsassi said above, the number of “I just want Halo 3 back” posts is uncountable.

#19

> > Halo 3 was my favorite Halo, and I would love 343 to build off it, but I don’t want an exact copy.
>
> And who does, exactly? You are putting words in people’s mouth’s by implying this.
>
> Again, people do not want Halo 3 in a Halo 4 or 5 case, and you will do well to stop suggesting that they do.
> Instead, counter their arguments for why each feature is not working for Halo, otherwise you are doing nothing by suggesting that they want nothing more than Halo 3.

Actually, I’ve seen quite a few people say that they’d be happy if 343 re-skinned Halo 2/3 and added a few things.

#20

Look i think we shouldn’t divide the community further in saying they are a halo 4 defenders because to be honest its still halo people have different tastes personally i love every halo i don’t have a favorite. We as fans should unite into making the game better for everyone so why not cater to people who love the old games but give things for newer fans to enjoy. you’re just gonna end up with more hate on from the community if you divide them into categories based on taste.